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THE FREEMAN PAMPHLETS 

THE ECONOMICS OF IRELAND 

AND THE POLICY OF THE 

BRITISH GOVERNMENT 

h 
George W. Russell 

("AE") 

With an introduction by 

Francis Hackett 




NEW YORK 

B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc. 

M CMXX 



Msne^pH 



25c. 



Digitized by tine Internet Archive 
in 2011 witii funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/economicsofirela02russ 



THE FREEMAN PAMPHLETS 

THE ECONOMICS OF IRELAND 

AND THE POLICY OF THE 

BRITISH GOVERNMENT 

bj 

George W. Russell 

("AE") 

With an introduction by 

Francis Hackett 




NEW YORK 

B. W. HUEBSCH, Inc. 

MCMXX 



Mr. Russell's essay was first printed in the 
Freeman (New York) under the title, "Sir 
Auckland Geddes' Handiwork." 




©CI,A576836 



COPYRIGHT, 1920 BY THE FREEMAN, INC. 
COPYRIGHT, I 920 BY B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. 

OCT 1 1 1920 



INTRODUCTION 

Most of us feel strongly, and talk strongly, about 
national questions, but it is the exceptional man who 
holds his feelings and his tongue in check until he has 
achieved mastery of his more immediate and more egois- 
tic inclinations. Among such exceptional men, of our 
generation, I know none more distinguished than the 
Ulsterman, George W. Russell. George Russell is the 
one towering figure of contemporary Ireland. Because 
he has never worked in England, like Bernard Shaw or 
George Moore or W. B. Yeats, his name is not so well 
known along the beaten paths of publicity. In propor- 
tion to his achievement he is, I think, not at all well 
known. But no one who ever sees his weekly journal, 
The Irish Homestead, or who has read^ his poetry, 
examined his paintings or thought over his books on 
nationality and cooperation and the state, can fail to 
have a sense of the fine and soaring distinction of this 
Irishman, And what gives his distinction its powerful 
and permanent quality is the base on which it stands. 
George Russell is eloquent and imaginative, but he is 
definite, candid, pointed and sane. Into his Irishness 
there is mixed something that has the tang of the North- 
ern province. It is not exactly Scotch cautiousness. It 
is not exactly harsh Presbyterian naturalism. But it 
is something hard and clear and firm, that cannot be 
easily traded upon or misled. And this quality, so often 
devoted to personal advancement, George Russell has 
given with absolute disinterestedness to the large pur- 
suits that I have named. Other men, of course, in the 
religious world or the artistic or the educational or the 
socialistic, can and do exhibit this sort of disinterested- 

[3] 



ness. It was common during the war, on both sides. In 
Ireland, as the movement that ended in the Easter exe- 
cutions testified, perfect self-sacrifice for a political or 
social cause, is by no means rare. But the thing that 
marks the devotion of George Russell is the swift and 
sweeping intelligence that has accompanied it. In 
holding to his cause of Irish agricultural and industrial 
development, he has embraced the realities of all civiliza- 
tion. It is this, in my opinion, that makes him tower 
above all other Irish spokesmen. It is this that makes 
The Irish Homestead editorials the best editorials in the 
English language to-day. 

This is the witness who comes to testify to Americans 
on the real meaning of Lloyd George's new bill for the 
government of Ireland. He does not, so far as I know, 
enjoy the business of political discussion. He was 
appointed by Lloyd George to the Irish Convention of 
19 1 7, and when that convention failed he practically 
made up his mind to put his future efTorts into activities 
removed from politics. But much as he distrusts politics, 
and aloof as he holds himself from them, he is too 
anxious for a brotherhood of Irishmen not to speak when 
he alone seems able to speak elTectively. This accounts 
for his coming forward now. He comes forward not as a 
Nationalist, a Republican or a Unionist. He comes 
forward as an Irishman, an economist and a believer in 
public opinion. In his own words, he writes "in order 
that no American who is interested in Ireland may be 
deceived." 

There are many points, indeed, on which Americans 
may be deceived in regard to Ireland. What, for ex- 
ample, is the real policy of the British Government? 
On the face of it, as a great many Americans of British 

[4] 



forbears contend, British policy in regard to Ireland can- 
not be dishonest or debased — stupid, perhaps, or mis- 
guided, but not dishonest. Men who believe in what 
Gilbert Murray calls the "profound consciousness of ulti- 
mate brotherhood between the two great English-speak- 
ing peoples" are loath to believe that the policy of the 
British Government ever could be crooked and sinister. 
They set such assertions down to passion- — that passion 
which, as George Russell himself declares, when it enters 
into public life "too often makes men blind in action and 
reckless in speech, and things are done and said which 
bring disaster to the nation." 

It is not in passion that George Russell analyzes the 
sinister policy of Britain. _ He does not speak out of 
those fuming instincts that belong to every herd. He 
speaks as a hard, clear economist, who reads what the 
scales record. 

And what a picture he gives us in the article that 
follows of a governmental policy not straightforward, 
not disinterested, not even commonly honest. He does 
not assert, he demonstrates, that the British Govern- 
ment has after long calculation devised a scheme by 
which the Irish people cannot possibly work out their 
own salvation. Is this incredible? We all know that 
it is not incredible that such schemes should be devised. 
Some of them were developed at Versailles. It is a 
similar scheme that George Russell patiently exposes in 
this article. He shows, first of all, the cold policy of the 
British government in regard to Irish trade and taxation. 
He portrays as "sheer robbery," with necessarily dire 
results, the forced contribution from Ireland ot eighteen 
millions in sterling a year. But more crippling even than 
this exaction, in the judgment of Russell, is the power- 

[5] 



lessness of Ireland in regard to its taxation and its trade. 
Is there any attempt to aid in the development of Irish 
agriculture or industries? Is there any attempt to give 
Ireland access to American markets, or America access 
to Ireland? There is, instead, the actual mxanacling of 
Ireland's underdeveloped industries, in obedience to 
British jealousy. There is the same cruel and dwarfing 
inhibition of Irish technical culture. The Irish govern- 
ment is to have no power to remit taxation or extend 
bounties. It is driven to depress the standard of life of 
its poorer classes, and to raise an inordinate revenue at 
the expense of these workers, of which Britain is to skim 
the cream. In addition, the Irish must continue to 
trade through Britain with whatever customers and 
producers it has by mere chance in the rest of the world. 
For this dependence, also, the bill provides indirectly, 
governed by its indefensible desire to keep Ireland 
enslaved. 

Such enslavement, however, requires more than a 
trade policy; and George Russell shows further how it is 
being secured. It is "not the policy of the Briti&h Gov- 
ernment that one section of the people should trust 
another section." He illustrates therefore how the British 
Government has juggled with the Ulster area, in "its 
reactionary attempt to make religion the basis of politics." 
This passage in Mr. Russell's argument is particularly 
important. When Lloyd George communicated his plan 
to America he did not explain how "Ulster" was to be 
defined. George Russell shows how it has been defined, 
and why. And he shows how the Lloyd George division 
cuts the heart out of representative government in Ire- 
land, as modern democracy conceives representative 
government. 

[6] 



But is not Ulster being protected? And is this whole 
scheme not a sample of federalism? Mr, Russell explains 
the bad intention of partitioning Ulster from the rest of 
Ireland. He proves the helpless and exasperating sub- 
ordination that is implied in this kind of "federalism." 

But even if Nationalist Ireland were not actually much 
richer than Unionist Ireland, even if the extortion of 
eighteen million pounds were adjusted to say eight 
millions, even if the Council were changed and county 
option allowed and the police made local and indirect 
taxation arranged to suit an Irish standard of living, the 
bill that is here riddled to pieces would remain a monu- 
ment of human perfidy. And this Mr. Russell also 
intimates. 

He intimates it by showing, on the one hand, the high 
possibilities of civilization that await Ireland (to which 
Ireland is alive), and, on the other, the smashing ruth- 
lessness of British military power. That military power 
is directed against the heart of Ireland, against a nation- 
ality that has been misunderstood, belittled, reviled and 
despoiled. 

"The power of Germany," said an Oxford Pamphlet 
in 1914, "the power of Germany over Alsace Lorraine or 
over Belgium means, if it means anything at all, that a 
certain number of human beings, Belgians or Alsatians, 
are forced to act in various ways against their inclinations 
at the command of other individuals, not because they 
admire or respect these individuals but from fear of the 
consequence of disobedience. The will of Germany is 
decided by the wills of individual Germans. It is being 
exercised at this moment upon individual Belgians, with 
what results of suffering and anguish to the victims and 
brutalization to the oppressors we are every day learning. 

[7] 



The power of one nation over another which can be 
gained by war means this and nothing else than this, in 
whatever various forms it may be exercised. If we be- 
lieve that it is not good for one man to have arbitrary 
power over others, if we believe that slavery is bad for the 
master as well as for the slave, we must believe it equally 
bad for one nation to rule over another against its will. 
To adapt Lincoln's words: No nation is good enough to 
rule over another nation without that other's consent." 

That is what George Russell means, with the change 
of Germany to Britain and Belgium to Ireland, when he 
utters the brutal fact: "Great Britain holds Ireland by 
military power and not by moral power." 

Perhaps it is foolish to talk to Americans of British 
descent, about moral power. But no one who wants to 
see life lifted up out of the squalor and hatred, the disease 
and famine, into which it has been plunged by mad 
imperialism can resist pleading, in the name of principle, 
for a sober understanding of the facts that Mr. Russell 
presents. The cause of Ireland is moral, or it is nothing. 

No policy of the British Government, however debased 
and dishonest, can crush Ireland. It can only give her 
suffering and anguish, while brutalizing the oppressor. 
But the time has now come for the world to set its 
consciousness against the establishment of such policies, 
and resolutely to deprive imperialism of the sanctions 
without which it cannot live. 

"The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs [Lord 
Curzon] has appointed a committee, with Sir Charles 
Eliot as chairman, to advise regarding a common policy 
towards British institutions, which will tend to promote 
solidarity among British communities in foreign coun- 
tries. The committee has been given a wide scope. It 

[8] 



will examine the question of further fostering solidarity 
by the propagation of British ideals in foreign countries. 
The suggestions made cover the registration of British 
subjects and encouragement of British schools, chambers 
of commerce, and local British newspapers and clubs." 

So British Imperialism is setting its foot in the path 
of German imperialism. So the victor drinks of victory, 
and is blind. But the world is sick of such maleficence. 
It is through with such underhand solidarity. Not all 
the "solidarity" on earth should protect the policies of 
the British Government when they have the character 
which George Russell shows them to have, in the Irish 
scheme now supported by so many British guns. 

Francis Hackett 

New York City 



[9] 



THE ECONOMICS OF IRELAND 

AND 

THE POLICY OF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT 

A LABOR OF LOVE? 

The new British Ambassador to the United States, 
prior to his departure for Washington, perhaps with 
the idea of propitiating Irish opinion in America, elected 
to speak on St. Patrick's Day. He wore a green Irish 
halo for the occasion. He said it had been a labor of 
love for him during last summer and autumn to assist 
in reducing to legislative form proposals for ending the 
Irish question. He said the new Bill for the government 
of Ireland was "a sincere attempt to place definitely and 
finally in the hands of the elected representatives of the 
Irish people the duty and responsibility of working out 
their own salvation and the salvation of their country." 
No doubt this statement has been cabled to Amer- 
ica, and I propose to examine here how far this state- 
ment is justified and how Ireland is indebted to Sir 
Auckland Geddes for his interest in its welfare. I lay 
this down as a fundamental proposition, which I do 
not think will be denied, that whoever controls the 
taxation and trade policy of a country controls its 
destiny and the entire character of its civilization. 
The body with control over customs, excise, income- 
tax, supertax, excess profits duty and external trade 
has it in its power to make that country predominantly 
industrial or agricultural or to make a balance between 

[II] 



urban and rural interests. It can direct the external 
trade of the country, make it flow into this or that 
channel. These powers over Irish taxation and trade 
policy are expressly denied to Ireland. Ireland in fact 
has less power under this last Bill over its own economic 
development than it had under the Act of Union. Under 
that Act, Ireland had one hundred and two members in 
the Imperial Parliament who could at times hold the 
balance of power. It was not a very real power, because 
when the interests of Ireland and Great Britain conflicted, 
both parties in Great Britain united against Ireland, but 
still to the leaders of parties Irish votes were worth 
angling for, for British purposes, and had to be paid for 
by Land Acts or other measures. The new Bill provides 
that the Irish representation at Westminster shall be 
reduced to forty-two members, and so at Westminster 
Ireland is made practically powerless, while everything 
which really affects Irish economic interests is still legis- 
lated for by the British Parliament. 

THE POLICY OF ECONOMIC SUBJECTION 

Every clause in this new Bill betrays the greatest 
apprehension lest Ireland should develop industrially. 
It is forbidden to remit excise duties. It could not, 
for example, by lowering the duty build up an Irish 
tobacco industry, or the manufacture of industrial 
alcohol, or the manufacture of sugar from beets. In- 
fant industries cannot be bountied, nor can export be 
encouraged by this means. The power to do that or 
anything like that for any of our industries is expressly 
denied. The jealousy against any possible great develop- 
ment of industries in Ireland which was manifest in the 

[ 12 ] 



discussions on the last Home Rule Bill is even more evi- 
dent in this Bill. We are not denied powers of taxation. 
Oh, no, we are allowed to impose on ourselves an addi- 
tional income-tax or an additional supertax, or to take 
off that additional income-tax or supertax. In fact after 
a poor country is taxed in all respects as its very rich 
neighbor, it is given as a special privilege the power of 
increasing its supertax, or the further special privilege of 
taking off this super-supertax. William Blake says 
"one law for the lion and the ox is oppression," and 
whatever may be said for an equal tax upon equal 
incomes it is manifestly unjust to insist that the same 
indirect taxation, the same duties on tea, sugar, to- 
bacco, cocoa, etc., shall be charged in a country where 
the average wage is about thirty-five shillings per 
week as in a country where the worker's average weekly 
wage is from five to six pounds. The better paid worker 
can bear with comparative ease high duties on tobacco, 
tea, or other commodities, but these bear heavily on the 
poorly paid Irish worker. This boasted equality of 
treatment is in reality flagrant injustice, and this in- 
justice, of which Irishmen have complained since the 
Act of Union was passed, will be continued under the 
new Bill if it becomes an Act. 



SHACKLING IRELAND S INDUSTRIES 

If this were really a sincere attempt to undo the 
work of British oppression in Ireland, to leave Ire- 
land within the Empire free to develop industrially, 
if Great Britain wished to make clear to the world 
that nothing like the suppression of the Irish woolen 
industry would be possible in future, that the spirit 

[13] 



which dictated that infamous suppression was dead, 
it would have left Ireland absolute freedom with re- 
gard to trade policy and taxation. The disinterested 
onlooker would have commented, "It would perhaps 
be expecting too much from Great Britain to allow 
Ireland political independence, but the complete free- 
dom to develop industrially now allowed within the 
Empire is sign of a real change of heart." No critic of 
British policy with regard to Ireland can find any evi- 
dence whatever of such a change of heart. The old in- 
dustrial jealousy is still obvious, and the old desire to 
tax Ireland that Great Britain may be enriched. Great 
Britain demands from Ireland a tribute of eighteen mil- 
lion pounds annually. A little island with four million 
inhabitants is expected, after providing for the expendi- 
ture on its own services, still further to provide this sum 
as a tribute to Great Britain. Now the main cause of 
the depopulation of Ireland, the main reason why it 
alone of all European Countries has halved its popu- 
lation within living memory, was the export of Irish 
revenues to Great Britain. After the Act of Union the 
Irish aristocracy began more and more to live in the 
new centre of political power, and the revenues from their 
estates formerly spent in Ireland, supporting Irish 
tradesmen and Irish industries, were spent in England, 
with the inevitable consequence that Irish industries 
decayed; and they could not for lack of capital be ad- 
justed when the industrial revolution, brought about by 
the use of power machinery, made increased capital 
necessary for that adjustment. Then came on the top 
of this the amalgamation of the two exchequers, and 
Irish surpluses varying during the past century from two 
to five million pounds annually were exported to Great 

C14] 



Britain and spent there. Up to tiie period of the Great 
Famine, Ireland increased its population by cutting 
down its standard of living. At that time the country- 
was swarming with beggars and paupers. The Famine 
forced on Ireland the tragic expedient of throwing off 
half its children so that those left might live, and ever 
since then Ireland year by year has sent its sons and 
daughters to the new world or the Dominions. That 
country which exports its revenues must export its popu- 
lation, and Great Britain is determined that this export 
of Irish revenue and Irish population shall continue, for 
in this new Bill it is provided that Ireland shall export 
eighteen million pounds annually as tribute to Great 
Britain. 

EIGHTEEN MILLIONS FOR WHAT? 

What does this mean? it means that as the aver- 
age wage of Irish laborers is about thirty shillings 
a week, and if we imagine every Irish laborer with 
a wife and three children, the British Government 
withdraws from Ireland annually the means of sub- 
sistence of a population of about six or seven hun- 
dred thousand people, and spends that money in Great 
Britain. Workers must follow their wage, and Irish 
workers must emigrate in the future as in the past. 
What is the justification for this tribute? Great Britain 
protects Ireland with its army and its navy. The pro- 
tection which its army gives Ireland at present is to 
proclaim martial law over the country, to arrest its 
political leaders and the most prominent of their follow- 
ers, to prevent Irish Fairs being held, to prohibit the 
sale of Irish industries, to suppress a commission ap- 
pointed by Irish Members of Parliament to inquire into 

[15] 



the resources and industries of Ireland, to hold with rifle 
and bayonet the places where it was found evidence was 
to be taken by this commission. This may seem unbe- 
lievable but it is actually happening, and if doubt is 
expressed every statement made can be verified from 
reports in British newspapers without Irish newspapers, 
which might be prejudiced to exaggeration, being quoted. 
"Oh," says the Imperialist, "but we protect Ireland 
from its foreign enemies for this eighteen million pounds." 
We do not know who are our foreign enemies. We never 
were oppressed by any people except our neighbors. 

ROBBING A SMALL NATION 

But let us for a moment grant that eighteen mil- 
lion pounds is the moral equivalent of that protec- 
tion. We then ask what is the economic equivalent 
to Ireland for this eighteen millions. If you who read 
fall into the sea and somebody plunges in after you and 
saves your life and in gratitude you say, "You are entitled 
to all I pos3>ess;" if the rescuer takes your income, you 
starve. If Great Britain really desired to be just to 
Ireland, it would arrange that there would be an ex- 
penditure in Ireland equal to the tribute; that ships for 
the navy, aeroplanes, clothing for troops, munitions, 
etc., could be manufactured here so that while Ireland 
would be contributing to Imperial defence it would not 
be impoverished by the manner in which the tribute 
would be exacted. Irish workmen would be employed 
and paid from the Irish revenues and the money raised 
in Ireland would be spent in Ireland; and however 
heavy the taxation would be, the money raised would 
return to its people and its tradesmen. It would be 

[i6] 



economically easier for Ireland to contribute eighteeen 
millions yearly for imperial purposes, if the money was 
spent in Ireland, than to contribute half that amount 
and have the money spent in Great Britain. The trib- 
ute as it stands is sheer robbery of a poor country by a 
rich one. We are forced to contribute money to pay 
British workmen; and every Irish family, after being 
taxed for Irish services, must contribute on an average 
eighteen pounds yearly per family to the payment or 
support of British workmen. Because we object we are 
called an unreasonable people. None of the Dominions 
will pay tribute to Great Britain. They realize that if 
they export their revenues they must export their popula- 
tion. Spanish colonies were lost to Spain because the 
'■evenues were exported with inevitable consequent 
impoverishment and inevitable rebellion. 

NO SOLUTION WANTED 

I am not now arguing for a republic or for inde- 
pendence. I am simply trying to make clear what 
element of truth there is in Sir Auckland Geddes' 
statement that the last Government of Ireland Bill, 
which he helped to draft, was a sincere attempt to 
render justice to Ireland inside the Empire. The 
British Ambassador to Washington made other state- 
ments in his speech, justifying British control over 
our economic system. "Ireland," he said, "for good 
or ill was inevitably within the sphere of the British 
economic system. It was dependent on England for 
manufactured goods of all sorts, and on the entrep6t 
trade of England for the supply of raw materials of 
foreign origin. No human power, no legislation, could 

[17] 



end the economic and financial association of Irish and 
British interests, nor could any readjustment prevent 
Ireland suffering because of disturbances in the exchange- 
rate between the London money-market and the markets 
of the outside world." I grant that the proximity of 
Great Britain to Ireland makes both these countries 
natural customers to each other. But Great Britain is 
not content with such natural trade. She forces us to 
trade with her only. Irish shipping, once prosperous, was 
gradually crushed out. Only a few days ago a British 
paper announced with exultation that the last inde- 
pendent Irish shipping company had been incorporated 
in a British shipping trust and there was not one single 
Irish overseas shipping company left. As it is, we have 
now to get permits to export Irish produce anywhere 
except to Great Britain. What Sir Auckland Geddes 
would have us believe is that we could not get manu- 
factured goods anywhere in the world except from 
Great Britain; that America, for example, would not 
or could not trade with us; that we could not get steel 
from the United States for our ship-building industry, 
or that Belgium or Russia would not sell flax to our 
linen-manufacturers, but for our union with Great Bri- 
tain: in fact we would be outcasts of the industrial 
world and no nation would trade with us, only that Great 
Britain supports us with its credit and sees to it that we 
pay our bills. 

CHEATED ON EXCHANGE 

With reference to the exchange, I might point out 
that the 191 8 report on the Irish trade in imports 
and exports shows that Irish exports exceeded in value 
the imports by £26,885,000 or twenty-five per cent. 

[18] 



The exports were valued at £152,903,000 and the imports 
at £126,018,000. If Ireland had an independent eco- 
nomic system and if the laws which govern the rates of 
exchange between Great Britain and the United States, 
or between Great Britain and France, prevailed, the 
British pound sterling would decline in value to about 
seventeen or sixteen shillings, and the Irish pound would 
appreciate in value in purchasing goods in Great Britain. 
Great Britain could not export gold at the rate of 
twenty-five million pounds annually to balance its trade 
with us. It balances accounts between Ireland and itself 
by the simple plan of extracting eighteen million pounds 
All these restrictions Sir Auckland Geddes has helped 
during a summer and autumn to devise. As he says, 
it has been "a labor of love" to him. If there were any 
other restrictions which this labor of love did not suggest 
to him, are they not all provided for by the power of 
veto given to the Irish Viceroy, who will give dissent 
or approval to Irish legislation on advice from the British 
Government? Finally is there not the British army, 
encamped in Ireland with tanks, aeroplanes, armoured 
cars, poisonous gas-bombs and all the paraphernalia of 
control? British interests are quite safe. It is only the 
ironical humor of British Members of Parliament which 
makes them protest to the world that they are endanger- 
ing their Empire by giving Ireland so much liberty and 
so many Parliaments. 

THE RELIGIOUS ISSUE 

As for the moral consequences of this Government 
of Ireland Bill, if it is put into operation it will arti- 
ficially divide Protestant and Catholic. Nothing could 

[19] 



be more loathsome to the man of liberal mind than 
this reactionary attempt to make religion the basis of 
politics. I, as an Irish Protestant and an Ulsterman 
by birth, have lived in Southern Ireland most of my 
life. I have worked in every county, and I have never 
found my religion made any barrier between myself and 
my Catholic countrymen, nor was my religion a bar to 
my work; and in that ill-fated Irish Convention one 
Southern Protestant Unionist after another rose up to 
say they did not fear persecution from their Nationalist 
and Catholic countrymen. The leader of the Southern 
Unionists made an eloquent appeal to the Ulster Union- 
ists to throw their lot in with the rest of Ireland; he 
said, "We who have lived among Nationalists trust 
them; we ask you to trust them." It was not the policy 
of the British Government that one section of the Irish 
people should trust the other section; and Mr. Lloyd 
George invented the "two Nations" theory to keep Ire- 
land divided. He has painted an imaginative political 
landscape of Ireland, a country he has never been in, 
and expects Ireland to adjust itself until it becomes like 
his imaginary political landscape. The Ulsterman and 
industrialist is told that the farmers of Ireland will tax 
him out of existence if he comes into an all-Irish Parlia- 
ment. A British finger is pointed at the Irish Na- 
tionalist as the person who will plunder the poor Ulster- 
man, all the time another British hand is securely in the 
Ulster pocket; and Ulster is being depopulated at ex- 
actly the same rate as the other three Provinces. "Na- 
tionalist Ireland will tax Ulster out of existence," says 
the British politician, who arranges in this very Bill 
that the six Ulster Counties shall every year export 
£7,920,000 as their share of Imperial tribute after pay- 

[20] 



ing for their own services. Is it conceivable that Irish 
Nationahsts would tax those six counties as the British 
Government taxes them and intends to continue taxing 
them, all the while warning the poor deluded Belfast 
worker against possible depredations on his pocket by 
the Southern Irishman? 



ULSTER NOT MOST PROSPEROUS 

The truth is that Nationalist Ireland is much richer 
than Unionist Ireland. The theory that Ulster Unionists 
create most of the wealth of the country is demonstrably 
untrue. One has only to read the report on the Irish trade 
in imports and exports, and compare the values of ex- 
ports from Nationalist Ireland with the values of exports 
from Unionist Ireland to realize that agricultural and 
Nationalist Ireland is the great wealth-producer. But 
even in this we can not take figures at their face value. 
The export of ships, mainly from Belfast, was valued 
in 1918 at £10,147,000, the highest recorded value, and 
the Belfast people are justly entitled to think with pride 
of these world-famous yards of theirs. But if we compare 
this output, not with the great cattle trade, but with one 
of the minor branches of Irish agricultural industry, the 
egg and poultry trade, shipbuilding as a wealth-creating 
industry takes its proper place. In IQ18 the women on 
the farms of Ireland were able to export eggs and poultry 
to the value of £18,449,310. Now the point about this 
total as compared with the value of the output of the 
shipbuilders is that the nominal values do not indicate 
the real wealth created. Practically all the £18,440,310 
was new wealth created out of the earth, since not five 
per cent of the feeding stuffs used were imported. If we 

[21I 



look at the import-statistics we see that vast sums were 
paid for steel, iron, coal and other raw materials to enable 
the shipbuilders to get to work, so that less new wealth is 
created in the one industry than in the other, pound for 
pound in value. And this applies to almost all the indus- 
tries carried on in Nationalist Ireland; a much smaller 
percentage of raw materials required is imported, and 
more real wealth is created than in North Ireland. If we 
examine into the means of production we find that there 
is more actual profit for the producer in every pound of 
final value, than in the case of the manufacturing indus- 
tries in North-east Ulster. I do not wish to depreciate in 
any way the magnificent energy of Ulster Irishmen. They 
have a right to be proud of what they have achieved, but 
it is not right to speak of that corner of Ireland as the 
wealth-creating centre. It will really suffer much more 
than the rest of Ireland under the regime Mr. Lloyd 
George has devised. He has cleverly taken the Ulster- 
men's own valuation of their wealth-producing capacity, 
and he demands from six Ulster Counties a tribute of 
£7,920,000 annually. This will go to pay British work- 
men, not Belfast workmen. I believe it will not take my 
Ulster countrymen very long to find out who really is 
oppressing them. 

GIVE IRELAND FREEDOM 

The Bill which Sir Auckland Geddes helped to plan 
does not enable Ireland to work out its own salvation. 
We in Ireland ask for powers to enable us to build up 
a civilization which will fit our character and genius 
as the glove fits the hand. We can not do that while 
an external power controls our taxation, revenues and 

[22] 



trade policy. It is the noblest and most practical of 
all human enterprises^the building up of civilization 
— and why the desire to do it should be deplored rather 
than lauded, I do not know. The British people, though 
they live beside us, know nothing about us — nothing 
about our national culture, history and traditions, or our 
legendary literature, so rich and imaginative, as ancient 
as the Greek, and going back as the legends of all ancient 
peoples do, to the creation of the world. The English are 
a comparatively new people with no mythology or an- 
tiquity of their own and they ignore Irish culture or try to 
crush it out in the schools they create. They believe or 
pretend to believe of the flame of nationality which burns 
so brightly in Ireland to-day that it is only a transitory 
passion. It will all burn out soon enough. A little more 
resolute repression, and it will disappear. They are 
so proud of their material might that they understand 
nothing of the power of spiritual ideas. I imagine that 
on a red sunset nineteen hundred years ago some believer 
in the all-conquering might of material power murmured 
so, as he gazed upon a crucified figure. A young man who 
had been troubling society with impalpable doctrines of 
a new civilization which he called "the Kingdom of 
Heaven" had been put out of the way ; and I can imagine 
that believer in material power murmuring as he went 
homeward, "It will all blow over now." Yes. The wind 
from the Kingdom of Heaven has blown over the world, 
and shall blow for centuries yet. After the spiritual pow- 
ers, there is nothing in the world more unconquerable 
than the spirit of nationality. Once it is created, it can 
raise up Babylons from the sands of the desert, and leave 
behind it monuments which awe us like the majesties of 
nature. It can not be suppressed. It is like the wheat 

[23] 



which when cut down before it has seeded, springs up 
again and again. So the spirit of nationality in Ireland 
will persist even though the mightiest of material powers 
be its neighbour. It springs from biological necessity. 
We desire to create a civilization of our own, expressing 
our nature and genius ; and therefore we ask for freedom 
and power. That freedom and that power to build up 
our own life are not given to us by the scheme which the 
British Ambassador to America helped to devise. In 
spite of his fine words about freedom, he was only tight- 
ening our chains ; and I write this in order that no Ameri- 
can who is interested in Ireland may be deceived. It is 
not self-government the British are bestowing on us; 
they are digging for us a dungeon even deeper than Pitt 
digged for us in the Act of Union. 



[24] 



BOOKS OF VALUE ON IRELAND 

The National Being, Some Thought on an Irish Polity. By 

A. E. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1916. 176 pages. 

What kind of Ireland do Irishmen desire to build? The Ulsterman 
George Russell strives in this ardent and noble book to give a worthy 
direction to the fresh national Irish will. He begins with fiercely humble 
admissions. "Our mean and disordered little country towns in Ireland, 
with their drink-shops, their disregard of cleanliness or beauty, accord 
with the character of the civilians who inhabit them." He goes on to 
large social considerations. "If we build our civilization without inte- 
grating labor into its economic structure, it will wreck that civilization." 
And he rises to a whole philosophy of politics: "We should aim at a so- 
ciety where people will be at harmony in their economic life, will readily 
listen to different opinions from their own, will not turn sour faces on 
those who do not think as they do; but will, by reason and sympathy, 
comprehend each other and come at last, through sympathy and affection, 
to a balancing of their diversities ..." The National Being is more 
than a definition of Irish nationalism. It is a definition of the soul that 
politics is called on to save. 

The Framework of Home Rule. By Erskine Childers. Lon- 
don: Edward Arnold, 191 1. 354 pages. 

This is an able examination of the guiding principles of self-determina- 
tion. Written in 191 1, before the author's reputed conversion to Sinn 
Fein, it went into the question of Ireland's status in the British Empire 
and it made out a powerful case for fiscal autonomy and dominion status 
for Ireland. The historical introduction is of great importance. It traces 
the relation to Britain of Canada, Australia and South Africa, and it 
uses with admirable force these analogies of untrammelled dominion 
control. As the advocacy of a definite scheme, this book has had per- 
haps more influence than any other Irish book of recent years. Except 
for its minimizing of the Ulster difficulty, it is intellectually a model of 
just and thorough discussion. The author is an Englishman. 

Ireland's Fight for Freedom. By George Creel. New York: 
Harper & Bros., 1919. 199 pages. 

The sub-title of Mr. Creel's book is "Setting Forth the High Lights of 
Irish History." This is exactly what his book does. Starting with the 
principle embraced in the recent resolution of the United States Senate 
— "That the Senate of the United States express its sympathy with 
the aspirations of the Irish people for a government of its own choice." 
— Mr. Creel rehearses the long struggle of the Irish people against 
the intruder whether as conqueror, confiscator, planter, administrator 

[25] 



or legislator. Packed with facts as to the "hve centuries of war" and the 
"two centuries of rebellion," Mr. Creel exhibits a strong Irish case for 
complete independence, with due attention to the Ulster problem and 
the related "Case of Canada." The book does not mmce matters. It is 
clear, terse, fluent and graphic. Its limitation may be said to be its 
journalistic and derivative character. It is the brief of a special pleader, 
not a judge. But it is substantially an accurate brief, addresssd by an 
American to the American public, appealing vigorously to an accepted 
American principle of self-government. 

The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland. By Michael Davitt. New- 
York: Harper & Bros., 1904. 751 pages. 

This is the epic of the Land League Revolution. In concrete style 
Michael Davitt relates the dramatic history of Ireland's confiscation in 
the interests of English possessors, and the re-conquest of Ireland in the 
interests of the Irish peasantry proprietary. The work of a passionate 
Nationalist, The Fall of Feudalism is in no sense unconsidered rhetoric. 
It is an invaluable source-book of Ireland's agrarian history. The 
crucial period of so-called "Parnellism and Crime" is closely covered by 
Davitt, and his estimates of his associates, including his ex-leader Parnell, 
remain of deep interest. The book is a monument to the reform of Irish 
land tenure, and to the men who wrought that reform. 

England's Case Against Home Rule. By A. V. Dicey. London: 

John Murray, 1887. 311 pages. 

As Vinerian Professor of English law in the University of Oxford, Mr. 
Dicey's reputation is worldwide. The aim of this compact volume is 
"to criticize from a purely English point of view the policy of Home 
Rule." Home Rule in all the forms under discussion — federalism, 
"colonial independence," "the revival of Grattan's constitution," and 
Gladstonian Home Rule — are closely examined, and the confusion and 
vital defects of the Gladstonian compromise receive a specially merciless 
criticism. Mr. Dicey does not pretend to be impartial or infallible and 
in ascribing Irish "discontent" to agrarian rather than political causes 
he evidently went astray; but his book is indispensable in its cool and 
searching scrutiny of the Liberal claim that the parliamentary manifesta- 
tion of Irish nationalism is compatible with the British constitution. 

Contemporary Ireland. By L. Paul-Dubois. Translated by 
T. M. Kettle. Dublin: Maunsel & Co., 1908. New York: 
Baker & Taylor (out of print). 536 pages. 

A translation of L'Irlande Contemporaire, Paris, 1907. The book is 
written by a member of the Brunetiere group. Its "five hundred crowded 
pages represent the attempt of a mind, at once scientific and imaginative, 
to see Ireland steadily, and to see it whole . . , The book is founded 

[26 1 



not on prejudice, or unreasoned feeling, or raw idealism, but on a broad 
colligation of facts." So the translator, the late Lieut. Kettle, M. P. 
It falls into four parts: the extraordinarily succinct historical introduc- 
tion, the examination of political and social conditions, the analysis of 
Ireland's material decadence, and the grave discussion of the factors 
in regeneration. The material is superbly amassed and commanded. 
No book rivals this book for competent research, and the point of view 
is on the whole profoundly sympathetic and nationalistic. 

Thomas Davis, the Thinker and Teacher, selected, arranged 

and edited by Arthur Griffith, Vice-President of the Republic 

of Ireland. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son, Ltd., 1918. 279 pages. 

Mr. Arthur Griffith originated the principles of Sinn Fein from the 

poetry of Thomas Davis. In his preface to the work of this poet-liberator, 

he says : 

"Davis was the first public man in modern Ireland to realize that the 
Nation must be rebuilt upon the. Gael." Poems and prose selections 
follow, first published in the paper the Nation during the three short 
years from 1842 to 1845, when Davis drove into the minds of the Irish 
the truth, that the power to reconstruct their nationality was vested 
solely in themselves. 

Ireland, A Study in Nationalism. By Francis Hackett. New 
York: B. W. Huebsch, 1918. 410 pages. New edition with new 
Preface, 191 9. 

When Mr. Hackett's book appeared two years ago, it was hailed by the 
critics as the one book on Ireland in our generation; nor has it suffered 
in comparison with later literature on the subject. Its particular aspects 
might be summed up as follows: his evolution from Home Ruler to Re- 
publican with the reasons; the dramatic arrangement of his material; 
his indictment of England through figures, statistics; his fearless exposi- 
tion of the obstructive power of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy (con- 
sidered politically not religiously); the style, of which Mr. Padraic 
Colum says, "... there is a distinct racial quality. In its sentences, 
spare and swift, is the quality of a race that boasted of its swords that 
they never left a remnant of a blow." 

The Evolution of Sinn Fein, By Robert Mitchel Henry. 
New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1920. 318 pages. 

Ireland is always a burning question, but Sinn Fein is a blazing one; 
a bonfire within a bonfire, not to be put out by machine guns or the soft 
words of British imperialists. Professor Henry, of Queen's University, 
Belfast, tells the story of this conflagration with the ironic insight and 
the judicial impartiality common to few historians. For the first time 

[27] 



the ultimate aims of the movement are clarified and given utterance. 
"Sinn Fein," he says in his conclusion, "aims at the complete political, 
the complete economic and complete rrioral and intellectual indepen- 
dence of Ireland." 

But Sinn Fein has not always aimed at such complete emancipation. 
By what slow processes it has come to be Ireland's chief source of strength 
and hope, is the author's theme. The successive stupidities of England's 
Irish policy account for the growing solidarity between the old warring 
factions that have been Ireland's destruction in the past. This move- 
ment's evolution — from a mere fanciful word — is told with the skill of a 
dramatist. But in spite of its dramatic quality the book remains de- 
tached and carefully historical throughout, ending with a note that is 
significantly new to the impetuous Gaelic temperament: 

"It may in the future be recognized by the conscience of mankind that 
no nation ought to exercise political domination over another nation. 
But that future may still be as remote as it seemed in the days of the 
Roman Empire." 

A Literary History of Ireland, from Earliest Times to the 
Present Day. By Douglas Hyde. New York: Charles Scrib- 
ner's Sons, 1906. 654 pages. 

The assassination of the Irish language is part of the history of Anglo- 
Irish relations. In this volume Dr. Hyde is less concerned with this 
political fact than with the culture embodied in the language he has 
helped to revive. What is there to be said of the specific Irish civiliza- 
tion, its sagas and its traditions and its legacy? Dr. Hyde's work is the 
extended answer to this relevant question. His book is thus inscribed: 
"To the members of the Gaelic League, the only body in Ireland which 
appears to realize the fact that Ireland has a past, has a history, has a 
literature, and the only body in Ireland which seeks to render the present 
a rational continuation of the past, I dedicate this attempt at a review of 
that literature which despite its present neglected position they feel 
and know to be a true possession of national importance." Out of the 
Gaelic League came most of the present Sinn Fein movement. Dr. 
Hyde is a Protestant Irishman, son of a clergyman. 

A Social History of Ancient Ireland. By P, W. Joyce, M.A. 

The Gresham Publishing Co., Ltd., Dublin and Belfast. 2 vols. 

579 pages. 

An examination in detail of life in ancient Ireland: their industries: 
games: dress. The daily life of an old Gael is traced from his rising; his 
bed is described; his breakfast, business, law courts, amusements. Of 
value to read now, as proof of the high civilization a free Ireland could 
att&in, 

[28I 



A Consideration of the State of Ireland in the Nineteenth 
Century. By G. Locker Lampson. New York- E. P. Button & 
Co., 1907. 609 pages. 

Mr. Lampson is a Unionist M.P. He asks, "How is it that the King is 
none the richer for Ireland?" His answer is one of the most fluent, ex- 
haustive and picturesque indictments of English rule in Ireland. Al- 
though it ends in a plea for the Union, it manages to present a sheaf of 
evidence damaging to the English government in every branch of Irish 
administration. The land question, the question of the Established 
Church, the history of Irish education and the history of Home Rule are 
saliently handled, and subjects are fortified by excellent quotations. 
Mr. Lampson is an Englishman. 

A History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century. By W. E. H. 
Lecky. New York: D Appleton & Co., 1893. Five volumes. 

No one exceeded Lecky in his detestation of the modern Land Revolu- 
tion in Ireland. He denounced it as "an 'elaborate and all pervading 
tyranny' accompanied by perhaps as much mean and savage cruelty, 
and supported by as much shameless and deliberate lying, as any move- 
ment of the nineteenth century." Yet his five-volume history of eigh- 
teenth-century Ireland, ending with the Union, is a laborious, scrupu- 
lous disentanglement of an older and infinitely more extensive tyranny, 
cruelty and lying, on the part of the alien government. These volumes 
constitute a valuable approach to modern Ireland. They are compiled 
by corral process. They are confessedly dull reading. They profess no 
particular sympathy for the victimized majority. But Lecky is honest, 
and from his painstaking narrative one is able to form one's own con- 
clusions as to the unstable bases of modern Anglo-Irish democratic 
relations. 

Ireland A Nation, By Robert Lynd. New York: Dodd Mead & 

Co., 1920. 299 pages. 

The author, literary editor of the London Daily News, a Protestant 
and for the Allies, says: "Has Japan contributed as many dead as Ire- 
land? She has not. Yet Japan is praised. Has New Zealand contri- 
buted as many? She has not. Yet New Zealand is praised. Has South 
Africa? Has Canada? Captain Esmode, M.P., said in the House of 
Commons: T have seen, myself, buried in one grave, 400 Nationalist 
soldiers killed in one fight — two-thirds as many as the total number the 
Dublin insurgents of Easter week. And that mournful spectacle was 
being repeated not after one fight, but after fifty during the war. In the 
most desperate daj's of the war — at Mons and at the Marne — Irishmen 

[29] 



were present at the thickest of the fighting and battalion after battalion 
gave itself up to the slaughter singing The Bold Fenian Men, A Nation 
Once Again and other songs of the kind' that police nowadays suppress 
with baton charges in Ireland.'" 

Mr. Lynd puts Ireland with Poland and sees the Irish question in its 
international aspect, a cool advocate, dispassionate, effective. 

Literature In Ireland. By Thomas Mac Donagh. New York: 
Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1917. 248 pages. 
This is an acute piece of literary criticism, but of propaganda value 
also, for the flower of a free Ireland is to be her culture. In these studies, 
Thomas Mac Donagh, a martyr of Easter Week, proves that though 
the Irish poets finally had to come to English words, they still clung to 
Gaelic metres. Rhythm, tone and spirit kept persistently native; only 
the dress was foreign and created what he calls an "Irish Mode." "Of 
the new literature in Ireland," he says: "It has a note of pride, of self- 
reliance almost of arrogance;" which to him presaged political success. 

Phases of Irish History. By Eoin MacNeill, Professor of An- 
cient Irish History in the National University of Ireland and 
Minister of the Interior of the Republic of Ireland. Dublin: 
M. H. Gill & Son, Ltd., 1919. 364 pages. 

An exact scientific refutation of Mr. Arthur Balfour's erroneous state- 
ment that the ancient Irish were a number of wandering tribes with no 
sense of national consciousness. Professor MacNeil proves their unity; 
that they never conceived of Ireland except as one nation. How deep- 
rooted is the aspiration of the Irish people for independence is shown in 
the following sentence: Here, [he is writing of the fourteenth century] 
we have the second attempt within fifteen years on the part of the Irish 
to determine the sovereignty under which they were to live." The 
divisions are: the Ancient Irish; the Celtic Colonization of Britain and 
Ireland; Ireland's Golden Age; the Norman Conquest; the Irish Rally. 
Keating is proved wrong in places and fallacies about the clan system are 
dispelled. 

A History of the Commercial and Financial Relations Betv.'een 
England and Ireland from the Period of the Restoration. 

By Alice Effie Murray. London: P. S. King & Son, 1907. 486 

pages. 

This work is the fortunate result of a research studentship at the 
London School of Economics. It is one of the first and one of the best 
modern documents in Ireland's economic case against English rule. 
Concentrating most of its attention on the deliberate ruin of Irish indus- 
try, the book continues its survey to recent times in a manner less de- 

[30] 



tailed. As the "fourth meat-producing country in the world," Ireland is 
predominantly agricultural in Miss Murray's estimation, and calls for an 
economic policy based on this and other agricultural conditions. Miss 
Murray throws some light on the anomaly of Ulster. Her contribution 
gains in impressiveness because it is the work of a disinterested scientific 
outsider. 

The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell. By R. Barry O'Brien. 

New York: Harper & Bros., 1898. 771 pages. 

Parnell was both a hero and a human being to Barry O'Brien. In 
English books like Morley's Recollections and Morley's Life of Glad- 
stone the unstinted admiration for Parnell is tinctured with the sad 
sense that his was a cold and destructive genius. O'Brien amply portrays 
a more intelligible national leader. Parnell did his lifework in twelve 
years. In that time he articulated the demands of a whole people and 
he forced those demands on a most powerful, most supercilious, most 
reluctant Empire. In doing this he was implacable. Only by sheer 
moral superiority, accompanied by unbending militancy, could Parnell 
have won his victories against the interests that opposed him. The 
history of those bitter victories and the tragic defeat that followed them 
finds in Barry O'Brien an intimate and devoted chronicler. The book 
has a great subject and it is very nearly a great biography. 

The Collected Works of Padraic H. Pearse. New York: Fred- 
erick A. Stokes Company, 191 7. 341 pages. 

Stories (mainly for children) poems, plays, make up this book. In a 
drama, "The Singer," Pearse has given his message to the world and also 
prophesies his own death, when he makes McDara the principal charac- 
ter say, "One man can free a nation as one Man redeemed the world," 
and again, "I will take no pike. I will go into the battle with bare hands. 
I will stand up before the Gall as Christ hung naked before men on the 
treel" Every line he wrote breathes the uncompromising idealism of the 
first president of the Irish Republic, his passion for the saving of Gaelic 
Ireland, the cause in which he spent himself. 

Ireland in the New Century. By Horace Plunkett. New 
York: E. P. Button & Co., 1904. 300 pages. 

When Sir Horace Plunkett wrote this much-debated volume he was 
a Unionist by natural affinity. The most important thing for Ireland, 
as he saw it, certainly the most importart thing for Ireland's sense of 
"inferiority," was to escape the "obsession" of nationalistic politics by 
"organizing self help" close to the ground. Since that time Sir Horace 
has abandoned some of his own precepts. He now believes in Dominion 
self-government and is at the head of a political party. His book, how- 

[31] 



ever, remains a most representative exposition of the non-nationalistic 
point of view. Its wise immediacy with regard to rural life and the rich 
resources at hand, its astringent criticism of Irish backwardness and 
non-Britishness, are all based on the interesting hypothesis that to be 
pro-Irish it is utterly unnecessary to be anti-English. No book on the 
same lines has superseded Sir Horace's. 

The Irish Labor Movement. By W. P. Ryan. New York: 

B. W. Huebsch, 1920. 295 pages. 

This book tells the story of Ireland's double slavery. Commonly 
people see Ireland bound by only one chain, only bent under one burden — 
political vassalage to England. With this subject books on Ireland are 
nearly all concerned. The author, one of the editors of the London 
Daily Herald, poet and playwright, is one of the first to deal adequately 
with another aspect of his country's dilemma. For Ireland has at pres- 
ent another burden and another chain, only English by accident — 
capitalistic economic organization as foreign to the Gaelic genius as the 
culture and language and political impositions of England are foreign. 
W. P. Ryan is by declaration a disciple of Larkin and Connelly although 
by definition he proves himself to be always more mild than they. For 
him the solution of Ireland's economic slavery includes the solution of 
her political misfortunes. Because he has a clear idea of Ireland's 
potentialities as a cultural unit he becomes an advocate of the Irish 
Labor Movement. Ireland, in his imagination, is walled into a dungeon: 
one stone removed lets fall the entire prison. The book covers three 
centuries and ends with the present day. 

Sixteen Dead Men and Other Poems of Easter Week. By Dora 
SiGERSON Shorter. New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1919. 85 pages. 
From Editor's Note: "This book is a sacred obligation to one who 
broke her heart over Ireland. Dora Sigerson in her last few weeks of life, 
knowing full well that she was dying, designed every detail of this little 
volume — the dedication to the tri-color, introduction, and the order in 
which the poems are printed. Any profit that may arise from the sale 
of the book will be devoted, as are all the copyrights of the author, 
to a monument which she herself sculptured with a view to its erection 
over the graves of the 'Sixteen Dead Men' when circumstances place 
their ashes in Glansenvin." 

These are flaming songs typical of the Irish reaction from defeat. 



[32] 



The Freeman 

— a weekly paper edited by Mr. Francis Neilson and Mr. Albert 
Jay Nock, is planned to meet the nev/ sense of responsibility and 
the new spirit of inquiry which recent events have liberated, especial- 
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of industry and commerce is that of fundamental economics. In 
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personalities or superficial issues; and especially with the economic 
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The Freeman is more interested in discovering popular sentiment 
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The Freeman presents sound criticism, freely expressed, upon 
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